Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa — Hand-Painted Oil Reproduction

Public-domain scan of the original shown for reference. Your canvas is hand-painted to order and photographed for your approval before shipping.

Reference image: Great Wave off Kanagawa2.jpg — After Katsushika Hokusai, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain. Your canvas is hand-painted to order.

Price by canvas size

Every The Great Wave off Kanagawa we paint is made to order, so the price tracks the canvas size and the amount of brushwork involved. These are the sizes our customers order most:

Estimates only — the final quote depends on your exact size, frame and shipping destination. Framing and shipping are quoted separately. Duties and import taxes are the buyer's responsibility (DAP).

Why painting a print in oil is worth doing

A woodblock print is flat by nature: ink pressed onto paper, one colour at a time, with visible edges where each block met the next. In oil, the Prussian blue can be built in two or three depths — deep in the trough of the wave, pale where the light crosses the crest — so the water has volume instead of pattern.

The foam is the other change. In the print it is flat white paper; in oil it can be laid thick with a knife so the claws genuinely stand off the canvas and throw a shadow. Under a picture light, the wave moves. That is the argument for commissioning one instead of buying a framed poster for a tenth of the price.

There is a test we encourage buyers to use on any "oil painting" they are offered: run a fingernail very gently across the surface. A hand-painted canvas feels like terrain. A print feels like glass.

The making of it

Hokusai was past seventy and had recently lost his wife and much of his money when he produced Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the series this print opens. It was made possible by a new pigment: Prussian blue had recently arrived in Japan in quantity, and it was cheap, strong and — unusually — lightfast enough for a commercial print run.

The wave is not a tsunami. It is a rogue wave, and the composition balances a huge claw on the left against a small, fixed mountain on the right, with three boats caught in between. Our painters repaint it at any proportion; the wide version suits a sofa wall, and we keep the outline crisp because soft edges are what ruin this image.

How our painters reproduce it

Our studio is in Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen — the centre of hand-painted oil reproduction for more than thirty years. A The Great Wave off Kanagawa here is not traced, projected or transferred. The painter works freehand from a high-resolution reference, in layers:

1. Composition and ground. The canvas is toned and the main forms laid out in a thin underpainting, matching the original proportions to your chosen size.
2. Colour build-up. The palette is mixed in oil, not acrylic — only oil gives the same depth, slow blending and the slightly translucent glow the original depends on.
3. Impasto and surface passes. The signature strokes go on last, loaded with paint, following the direction of the original's brushwork. This is the slowest and most skilful stage.
4. Drying and inspection. Layered oil needs days to set properly. We let it. Then the finished canvas is checked against the reference for colour, composition and stroke character.

Where it hangs best

Prussian blue, a claw of foam and a small Mount Fuji on the horizon — the most famous print in the world, painted in oil. Rooms our customers choose most often:

• Living room in a coastal, Japanese or Scandinavian scheme
• Bathroom or spa room — the subject is water and it likes humidity-proof framing
• Hallway or stair wall — strong graphic shape read at a distance
• Hospitality — hotel rooms, sushi bars, beach houses and surf lodges

Framing

Choose gold to echo the original's warmth, matte black for a contemporary room, walnut for a traditional interior, or no frame at all as a gallery-wrap canvas ready to hang. Frames are quoted separately and packed with corner protection.

How ordering works

1. Tell us the painting, size and frame. WhatsApp is fastest — include a wall photo if you want sizing advice.
2. Get an exact quote. Usually within the hour, with the timeline confirmed in writing.
3. 70% deposit starts the painting. Paid by bank transfer, PayPal, credit card or Wise.
4. We send photographs of the finished painting. You review it before anything ships. If something clearly does not match your order notes, tell us and we adjust it.
5. Pay the 30% balance, then we ship. Tracked worldwide courier, rolled in a rigid tube or crated if framed.

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